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birdykinsreads 's review for:
Fayne
by Ann-Marie MacDonald
adventurous
challenging
emotional
mysterious
slow-paced
We read Fayne for our most recent bookclub and after discussing it was 4 stars across the board.
Ann-Marie MacDonald has such a talent for building atmosphere and setting a story in time and place—in Fayne we’re on the moor, straddling Scotland and England (a theme of inbetweeness will come up again and again) where the honourable Charlotte Bell is being raised and educated by her single father Lord Henry Bell in the late nineteenth century, sequestered from all outside contact due to an unnamed condition.
MacDonald is in no rush to move the plot forward, uses language and terms of the time, and because of that devotion to authenticity it takes a good 50 pages to get my bearings and delve into the mysteries of the bog and this strange family. There’s a chance I might have abandoned this book had I not been reading it for bookclub, but once you get in, you’re in and it’s a fascinating story filled with nuanced realistic characters (no villain is just a villain) and a plot of interconnected secrets and tales that all eventually come to light.
We could all agree this was beautifully written and well done but that both the beginning and end left us wanting—the beginning being a bit too slow to get into and the end too convenient with every possible lose end tied up. There was also a consensus that (no spoilers) when MacDonald introduced magical realism into the chat, it was to the book’s detriment. I think there was also some amazing discussion about the main plot point (no spoilers) and how it was handled might have left some of us feeling she tried to both do too much while somehow not giving us enough at the same time.
All in all most of the above was easy to overlook in the face of such an ambitious, enveloping and immersive story and I’m glad I read it. Ann-Marie MacDonald is a Canadian treasure for a reason and she lives up to it here for sure.
Ann-Marie MacDonald has such a talent for building atmosphere and setting a story in time and place—in Fayne we’re on the moor, straddling Scotland and England (a theme of inbetweeness will come up again and again) where the honourable Charlotte Bell is being raised and educated by her single father Lord Henry Bell in the late nineteenth century, sequestered from all outside contact due to an unnamed condition.
MacDonald is in no rush to move the plot forward, uses language and terms of the time, and because of that devotion to authenticity it takes a good 50 pages to get my bearings and delve into the mysteries of the bog and this strange family. There’s a chance I might have abandoned this book had I not been reading it for bookclub, but once you get in, you’re in and it’s a fascinating story filled with nuanced realistic characters (no villain is just a villain) and a plot of interconnected secrets and tales that all eventually come to light.
We could all agree this was beautifully written and well done but that both the beginning and end left us wanting—the beginning being a bit too slow to get into and the end too convenient with every possible lose end tied up. There was also a consensus that (no spoilers) when MacDonald introduced magical realism into the chat, it was to the book’s detriment. I think there was also some amazing discussion about the main plot point (no spoilers) and how it was handled might have left some of us feeling she tried to both do too much while somehow not giving us enough at the same time.
All in all most of the above was easy to overlook in the face of such an ambitious, enveloping and immersive story and I’m glad I read it. Ann-Marie MacDonald is a Canadian treasure for a reason and she lives up to it here for sure.